


Change

by sussexbound (SamanthaLenore)



Series: The Homecoming [10]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gambling, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, Oral Sex, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 23:37:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2044503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamanthaLenore/pseuds/sussexbound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry glances over at the other woman, who inclines her head in the subtlest of unspoken communications. </p><p>Harry clears her throat, forces a nervous smile.  “John, there’s something I need to tell you.” </p><p>John reaches out for the glass in front of him, realizes that it contains nothing stronger than water, and withdraws his hand again. </p><p>“India and I are moving.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Change

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, all. Sorry this took so long. I've been a little out of commission with my health the last week or so.
> 
> Thanks again to all of you for continuing to read and comment on this series. It means the world to me.
> 
> This story can be read alone or as a part of "The Homecoming" series. Though, I think it makes more sense in the context of the series.

Harry Watson is absolutely rapt.

This pleases John. Well, it would, wouldn’t it?  He’s a romantic and a story-teller at heart, and the case on Copper Beech Lane _was_ an interesting one.  Besides it gives him something to focus on rather than his sister’s drinking (or lack there of) and the ever-piercing, knowing gaze of the other woman across the table.

All things considered, dinner is going well.  

Sherlock had actually been quite surprised when John walked into the kitchen the previous afternoon, grocery bags in hand, and announced that Harry and the other woman were coming for dinner the following night.  There was the whirlwind of John and Mrs. Hudson tidying up.  All Sherlock’s papers, magazines, and chemistry equipment tucked away in dark closets and cupboards.  There was a menu, meticulously planned by John.  There was even pudding care of Mrs. Hudson.  And of course two bottles of wine, which Sherlock promptly hid.  

John has the worst habit of subconsciously undermining his sisters success when it comes to her drinking.  The less said about it the better.  But wine with dinner would not be considered a friendly gesture, especially by the other woman.  Best to conduct a little damage control while there was still time.

And so here they all are!  Harry is fine.  John is agitated, but holding his own.  Outwardly the other woman is her usual aloof self, but she is cautious of John’s interactions with his sister, which seems to be born of a fierce sense of protectiveness.  Sherlock is merely curious.  He observes.

When John reaches the end of his tale, there is nothing more to talk about.  An uncomfortable silence descends for a moment or two.  Harry glances over at the other woman, who inclines her head in the subtlest of unspoken communications. 

Harry clears her throat, forces a nervous smile.  “John, there’s something I need to tell you.” 

John reaches out for the glass in front of him, realizes that it contains nothing stronger than water, and withdraws his hand again. 

“India and I are moving.”

John looks stunned, but it only lasts a second or two. He sits a little straighter in his seat, clenches and unclenches his hand atop the table, and takes a deep, quick inhalation.  “Why?”

Not _where_ — _why_?  Interesting…

“We want to get away from London.  The bustle, you know.  I—I think I’m getting too old for all this—this madness.”

“You’re 46.”  This tight, clipped.

“We’re moving to Italy, John.”  Harry seems to be gaining courage, the more she speaks.  “India can work from anywhere.  She has family there.  There’s a little place just outside of Praiano her uncle will rent us. I’m going to concentrate more on my art.”

John laughs.  “Your what?”

If Harry is hurt, she is undeterred.  “You know I paint.”

“As a hobby, because your therapist said it was a good idea.  And you don’t speak a word of Italian.  How’s that going to work?”

“I’ve been teaching her.  She’s quite adept already,” the other woman finally interjects.

John’s mouth forms a straight line, a muscle in his jaw twitches.  “You stay out of this.”

Sherlock stretches out his leg and presses his foot to John’s under the table.  The other woman arches a brow.  But, it’s Harry who speaks—dead calm and with all the confidence in the world.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t speak to her that way.”

John’s face grows slightly red, and Sherlock can see the storm brewing just below the surface of his eyes.  They’re dark with ire.  He presses his foot a little more firmly against John’s, but John shoves it away roughly.

“Pudding.”  Sherlock forces a smile.  “There’s pudding you know.  Quite good.  One of Mrs. Hudson’s specialties, I think.”

Everyone stares.  John lifts a finger.  “Sherlock…”

“You two want to talk alone,” the other woman suddenly interjects.  “Sherlock and I will…”  She turns to him.  “Do you smoke.”

“Sometimes.”

“Shall we?”  She nods toward the street outside.

“Yes.”

“Sherlock,” John warns, tightly.

“Talk,” is all Sherlock says in return, before getting to his feet, and following the other woman out of the kitchen.  He grabs his coat, and leads the way downstairs.  “We can go through the landlady’s kitchen.  Better than standing on the street.”

“Mrs. Hudson,” he announces as they walk through the front door.  “We’re just going out the back.”   She’s nowhere in sight, but there is a light on under the bathroom door and the flat smells faintly of her ‘herbal soothers’.  It is Friday night, after all.

The other woman says nothing.  But she buttons her coat and ties her scarf as they step out into the late spring chill, and then settles down onto the stoop as she fishes around in her pockets for a lighter.  Sherlock steps down onto the walk and leans against the wall, stuffing his hands into his pockets.  The night is clear and the back of the flat is sheltered from the light of the street for the most part.  He can see a few stars struggling to shine through the light pollution in the tiny slice of sky above them.

Praiano.  Small village.  By the sea.  John’s sister will be able to stare up at a veritable sea of stars every night.  Fortunate woman.

The other woman clears her throat, and he looks down.  She’s extending the pack in her hand to him.

He shakes his head.  “Best not.”

“Do you mind if I…?

“No.  Go ahead.”

There is the brief flare of her lighter, and then she inhales, holds it, exhales slowly.  She pulls out her phone and starts to silently scroll through something on the screen.  Sherlock looks back up at the stars.

“How angry is he likely to get?”  The woman finally says after several minutes.

Sherlock looks down at her.  She’s still browsing her phone, eyes glued to the screen.

“I don’t know.”

She nods.

“But, he wouldn’t hurt her?”

“Never.”

She nods again.  “Good.”  She types something, sends it.  “You know about the father, I take it?”

“John doesn’t talk about things like that.  But I know some of it.”

She does look up then, brow cocked in question.

“Observation, investigation,” he explains.  “Childhood medical records.  Psychiatrist’s case notes.”

She lets out a little puff of laughter and cigarette smoke, and he smiles along with her.

“There were a disproportionate number of rugby injuries,” he says by way of explanation.

She sobers and nods.  “Harriet practically single-handedly parented John until she turned eighteen.  Did you know that?”

He stares at the top of the woman’s head as she types away on her phone.  There are a few silver hairs starting to thread through her dark curls.

“No.”

The woman nods.  “She did.  Someone had to take care of the two of them, and John was still a wee thing.  I think he’s angry because she left once she came of age, went off to Cardiff with her first girlfriend.”

He nods.

“She had to get away.  The atmosphere in that house was killing her.”

“And the mother?”

“She left when Harriet was ten.”  The woman takes another drag from her cigarette.  “It was a match made in hell, from what I can tell.  Father a throw-back, ultra-conservative, ex-military.  They were raised strict Catholic, you know.”

“I suspected.”

“Mmm.  Well, yes.  Mother was much too clever for him—bored, restless, bit of a dilettante or maybe just a free spirit.  She took off to Oxford, then Cambridge.  Studied Philosophy, Women’s Studies, English Lit.  

“She’d come sweeping back in from time to time.  Whisk them off on some little adventure or another, and then after a week or so, just drop them back at home with the colonel and disappear again for months.  No calls.  No correspondence of any kind.

“But the colonel turned drunk after she left, and a gambler.  Or maybe he was always a bit of an addict and just got worse.  I don’t know.  Harriet and John were left pretty much to their own devices, though.  Harriet used to steal tinned food from the alley behind the grocers when they were unloading just so she and John could eat sometimes.”

The woman has finished her cigarette.  She tosses it to the ground and crushes it under the toe of her shoe.  “Is he going to forgive her for leaving again do you think?”  She jerks her chin toward the floor above them.

Sherlock looks up, and shakes his head.  “I don’t know.”

The woman sniffs in the cold, and fumbles about in her pocket for another cigarette.  “You look like her, you know?”

“Who?”

“Their mother.”

Sherlock doesn’t know what to say.

“Here.  Look.”  The woman nods to the spot on the stoop beside her, as she scrolls through her phone.  

Sherlock joins her, and she holds the phone out for him to see.  There’s a photo of two towheaded children.  Harry, tall, lanky, scowling.  John, small, sunburnt and staring up at his mother with a look something akin to worship in his eyes.  And the mother—short, but fine-boned, dark curly hair, high-cheekbones and brilliant cerulean eyes.

“You look like her too,” Sherlock says, because he feels a little thrown off-balance.

“So Harriet tells me.”

“What happened to her?”

“She died three years ago.  Cancer.”

“I was away then.”

“Yes.”

The woman grows silent.  Sherlock feels a little ill.  

John has always had secrets, or thinks he has.  There is a strange understanding between them.  Sherlock ferrets them out.  John pretends to be angry, but is secretly relieved.  But the death of his mother while Sherlock was away—John’s never even so much as mentioned it.  

One more thing to add to the weight that is crushing John under.  Sherlock would have liked to have known, to not have had to learn about it from the near stranger beside him.

“Here, look.”  The woman holds out her phone again.  “That’s the colonel.”

The man is exceptionally tall, blonde, close-cropped hair.  He’s built solid, his features square, strong.  He has large, meaty hands and hard, dark, grey-blue eyes.  It’s slightly unsettling.  Sherlock sees some of John in the man.  He sees some of what John might have become, what, he suddenly realizes, John probably still fears he will become.  But there is a tenderness in John that he cannot see in this man’s eyes.  John is softer, stronger, and a better man than his father was.

The woman swipes the picture away, and it is replaced by another.  Harry and John.  John in fatigues and a brown T-shirt, posture stiff and uncomfortable.  He has a camouflage backpack slung over one shoulder, and an arm around Harry, who is leaning her head against his shoulder, clearly trying not to cry.  

“This was the day he shipped out.  She worried about him every day.  He wrote her only once, and he did two tours of duty, back-to-back.  She was sick with anxiety for a whole year.”

Sherlock hears the tinge of anger in the woman’s voice.  She is fierce in her love for John’s sister.  He understands it.  He would kill for John.  He has.  

“Maybe we should…?”  The woman’s eyes drift back up toward the flat.

“Yes.”

Mrs. Hudson is sitting in her kitchen in her dressing gown, nursing a cup of tea and a small plate of assorted biscuits when they walk in.

“Oh, Sherlock.  I thought I heard you earlier.”  She looks curiously at the other woman.

“This is…”  Sherlock realizes he has no idea what the woman’s name is.

“India,” the woman extends her hand.  “I’m John’s sister’s wife.”

_Wife.  Interesting._

“Oh…”  Mrs. Hudson’s face spreads into a smile.  “How nice.”  She takes the woman’s proffered hand in both of hers, and gives it a tight squeeze.

She turns her eyes back to Sherlock.  “Is that Harry upstairs, then?  There’s been an awful lot of shouting.”

“John?”

“Mostly, yes.”

“Quieter now,” the other woman observes.

“Yes.  They quieted down about five minutes ago.”

“Shall we?”  Sherlock inclines his head toward the flat upstairs.

“Yes, I think we’d better.”

Mrs. Hudson expresses her pleasure at meeting India again, and then they head back upstairs.

Harry is sitting on the couch, elbows balanced on her knees, hands clasped in front of her.  She looks tired.

John is standing at the window with his back to her.

“Everything alright?”  the other woman asks as they enter.  

John doesn’t move or speak.  Harry looks vastly relieved to have the other woman back.

“We should go, I think.” Harry says.

“Alright.”  The other woman fetches Harry’s coat from the hook in the hall, and they say their good-byes.  Harry apologizes for not staying for pudding, hugs Sherlock again ( _is it becoming a habit?_ ).  The other woman says good-bye to John, but he doesn’t reply.

And then they are gone and the flat is suddenly very quiet.

Sherlock goes into the kitchen, clears the table.  He should tidy up.  John doesn’t have the capacity at the moment, and filthy dishes left out overnight irk him.  

Sherlock fills the sink, begins to wash up.  He’s finished the dinner dishes and moved on to the pots and pans when John finally joins him at the sink, takes up the tea towel and starts to dry.

“Are you alright?”  Sherlock asks after what seems like an interminable stretch of silence.

“I don’t want to talk.”

“Alright.”

They finish the rest of the washing up in silence.

“There’s still the pudding,” Sherlock suggests.  “Do you want some?”

John nods.  “I’ll make tea.  Oh, and warm that sauce on the stovetop, not the microwave.  You had eyeballs in there last week.  Don’t think I don’t know it.”

Sherlock smiles and does as he’s told.

They take the pudding and tea into the sitting room.  John lights a fire and settles into his chair.  

“They’re married.”  He finally says.

“Yes, I know.”

John’s eyes snap up from his pudding.  “You know?”

“Just now, downstairs, she introduced herself to Mrs. Hudson as Harry’s wife.”

“Oh.”  John goes back to eating his pudding.  He takes a sip of his tea, stares into the flames in the hearth.  “I don’t know why she’d bother again.  It never lasts.”

“It has some legal benefits.”

John snorts out a bitter laugh.  “Fine reason that is to get married.”

Sherlock just shrugs.  “Better than some.”

John goes back to eating in silence.

“John, I—I think I should tell you.  Outside with…”

“You were smoking.  Yeah, I know.”

“No, actually.”

“Oh.”  John looks legitimately surprised and Sherlock isn’t sure if he is offended or not.

“But she did mention your parents.”

“My parents?”  It seems to take John a moment to process this information, but when he does, his back straightens into his usual posture of defense.  His mouth is a tight line as he continues.  “What about my parents?”

“Just that your father was…”  Sherlock knows he needs to choose his words carefully.  He wouldn’t even be sharing if not for the fact that John had made it explicitly known on two separate occasions now, that he does not appreciate being talked about behind his back, or kept in the dark about things in relationship to his sister.  

“That your father was difficult.  That your mother left.  That Harry tried her best until she was of age, and then she left too.”

John swallows tightly.  His jaw clenches and he tears his eyes from Sherlock’s to stare down at the bowl of dessert in his lap.

“You—you wanted me to tell you about these things John, so I…”

“Don’t.”  Sherlock watches as John’s breathing starts to pick up.  He's fairly seething.  He sniffs.  “Harry’s version of the tale, no doubt.  I’m sure she made sure it placed her in the most flattering light.”

“I don’t think so.”

“What did India say?!”  John bites out angrily.  “Tell me.  Everything.”

“John…”

“Sherlock.”  In the tone he can never refuse.

“She said that your father was strict, Catholic, ex-military, and after your mother left that he turned to drink and gambling.  She hinted that he was occasionally—that he could be physically abusive toward the two of you, mostly when drinking.”

John’s left hand is trembling.  He grips his pant leg tightly, works it in his fist a moment, lets go.  “What else?”

“John, if this is…”

“What else?”  John grinds out.

Sherlock takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly.  “Your mother left when you were seven.  She would come back from time-to-time in small intervals.  Run you and Harry a little, and drop you back home with your father, disappear into the ether again for months at a time.”

John takes a deep breath.  Nods.  Shakes his head.  “Nice.”

“Harry did her best to care for the two of you until she met her first girlfriend.  Then she left home.”

“And…?”  John’s voice is rough.  Sherlock can tell he is furious, but it is an anger that is flirting the edges of something else as well.

“That’s all.  She had a few pictures.”

“Pictures?”

“One of your father.  One of you, Harry and your mother.  Another of you and Harry the day you shipped out on your first tour.”

John nods again, his mouth tight, but his lips tremble a little.  

“She had no right,” he finally manages in a hoarse whisper.  “None.”

Sherlock doesn’t know what to say.  

All the anger seems to drain from John.  He is left looking tired and sad.  “I’m going to bed.”

Sherlock nods.  He aches.  Things are not right, but he doesn’t quite know where they went wrong or what on earth he could ever do to start to fix them, and so he lets John go.

John sets his half-eaten pudding on the table beside his chair.  He leaves his nearly full mug of tea, and he ascends the stairs to his own room.  He hasn’t slept in his own bed for weeks.  The fact that he goes there now speaks volumes.

Sherlock cleans up the trappings of their arrested pudding, and drags himself off to his own room.  He lays in the dark and stares up at the ceiling trying to imagine what John might be doing a floor up, alone.  

John has been spending so much time in his bed, of late, that it makes sleeping alone suddenly feel rather cold and empty.  He hasn’t felt this lonely since John married.  But John has gone somewhere he can’t follow, tonight; crawled into himself and chosen to walk away rather than draw closer. Sherlock feels lost.

Everything has always hurt too much, from the time he was a small child.  Mycroft understood that.  Mycroft helped him learn to pull away, separate, filter out.  But Mycroft is gone now, and he didn’t know what it was to have someone like John.  He didn’t know that with John it is impossible to shut off.  When it comes to John, Sherlock drowns in emotion, and he feels stupider than he ever has in his life, because for all that emotion, all that yearning, he is still helpless in the face of it.  He fails John again, and again in this regard.  It is inexcusable and it is frustrating to the extreme! 

Sherlock has no idea how long he lays there in the dark, thinking, trying to formulate some plan to excavate the root of John’s anger, John’s grief, how he might start to mend it and make John happy again.  It’s the creak of the door to the bedroom that finally yanks him out of the endless cycle of his thoughts.

John climbs into bed, and lays on his back staring at the ceiling.  “Are you awake?”

“Yes.”

He hears John sigh into the darkness.  “I’m sorry, Sherlock.  I’m not angry at you.  You know that, right?”

“I wasn’t sure.”

John turns his head.  “I’m not.  You didn’t do anything wrong.  In fact—you did everything right.  It’s me.  I—I just can’t…”

Sherlock shifts across the mattress until he can feel the heat of John’s body, the nearness of him.  He yearns to touch.  And maybe that would be right.  Maybe he does know what to do, after all.  

 _Everything right,_ John has said.  

_Everything right._

Sherlock draws closer still, wraps an arm around John’s waist, pulls him in close.  John’s body is full of tension, and it only seems to increase as Sherlock closes the gap between them.  

Sherlock knows he has no words to ease whatever is tearing John apart.  If he tries now it will be a spectacular failure.  And John is not angry at him.  John is angry at Harry, at her wife, at the situation, perhaps even at his mother, his father, whatever it is this whole mess of a night has stirred to the surface.  But he is not angry at Sherlock.  

 _Everything right._  

Sherlock has done everything right—for once!

Small, tender kisses along John’s jaw.  He likes that.  Just behind his ear.  Just there.  His favorite place to be kissed.  

A sigh.  John turns his head a fraction, gives Sherlock room.  The tension in his body lets go only to be replaced by tension of a different kind.

_Perfect._

John wants to forget for awhile.  He needs to not think about Harry’s abandonment, or the shadows of his past.  He wants this.  He wants _them_ , here, now.  And this—this is something Sherlock can give.

Sherlock undresses, undoes John bit by aching bit.  He has been observing him for years, drinking up every breath, every heavy-lidded stare, every lick of the lips.  He knows the language John is speaking without saying a word—elevated pulse, pupils dilated, breathe, gasp, shudder.  He can read John like a crime scene.  He can coax music from him with the same dexterity he does from a violin.

John is coming apart beneath him now, moans and small snatches of sentences.  _“More—there—God, please—Like—Yes…”_

John is beautiful like this.  

He is fully contained, so disciplined, so decent, when he is outside this room.  But here, beneath the weight of Sherlock’s body he is desperate, needy.  Tonight he begs.  Tonight he says the filthiest things, things that tinge Sherlock’s whole body pink, and make desire race through his veins like fire.  Tonight John let’s Sherlock ease him open, unravel all his secrets, shatter him fully.

He asks for things and Sherlock obliges gladly.  And he must do it right, because John’s breath is so quick, his skin warm and flushed, and he throbs against Sherlock’s tongue, and he tastes of salt, and musk, and pre-come and Sherlock knows it should be off-putting, not quite sanitary somehow, but it’s John, and John, and all of John.  And all of it is perfect, and all he wants is more.  To feel John unravel, to come apart just for him.

John’s fingers are in his hair, they tighten almost painfully, loosen, soothe, tighten again.  John is gasping his name.  John’s eyes are squeezed so tight, and he looks as though he is hovering somewhere between pain and pleasure.  His words have devolved to nothing but grunts, small bursts of profanity, and the loveliest of whimpers.  

Sherlock watches everything, every expression, every bead of sweat that gathers along his brow, every clench of John’s fist in the bedclothes.  He memorizes the way John’s abdomen tightens as he nears his peak, the way he can feel John’s cock pulse and throb against the roof of his mouth, and he nearly comes himself with the way John chokes out his name as his orgasm finally takes him.  A plea, a sob, a prayer in the end.

John is salty-bitter in his mouth, and he swallows because he can’t think of anything else to do.   It’s the least pleasant part of the whole thing, but John is panting against the mattress, flushed, and languid, and exquisite—skin slick, glistening, lips moist, eyes hooded.  Sherlock rests his cheek against John’s thigh and gazes up at him, waits until he sees John recover enough to form coherent thoughts.  John’s eyes drift down and catch his.

Sherlock smiles, reticent, inquisitive.  _Was it right?  Was it what you needed?  Was I?_

“Jesus,” John whispers.  “Come here.”

Sherlock slides eagerly up John’s body, settles in beside him, and John rolls on his side, reaches over to brush the hair from his forehead.  “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Was it wrong?”

“No.  Oh Christ, Sherlock—no.”  John’s eyes are everywhere, like he is assessing him for injury.  “It was—you were—perfect.”

Sherlock feels the tension dissipate at the praise.  He relaxes into the crook of John’s arm.  He’s suddenly very sleepy.  “Good.”

John lets out a small huff that may be a laugh.  “But you’re okay?”

“Hmm.  Should maybe brush my teeth.”

John chuckles.  “Sorry about that.”

“It was fine.”

“Sure?”

“I wouldn’t say it was fine if it wasn’t.”

“Okay.”

Sherlock draws closer, and savors the sensation of John’s fingers tracing slow, lazy trails over his back.

“Thank-you,” John finally murmurs.

“Mmm.  For what?”

“This.  Tonight.  Everything.”

Sherlock props himself up on one elbow, and stares down at John.  He looks relaxed.  He looks almost happy.  “I’m sorry she’s leaving.”

“It’s what she does.”

And Sherlock isn’t so sure that is the truth, but he leaves it because John seems so quiet, so content, and Sherlock is learning that sometimes that is enough.  He just nods.

“The rest of it, the things India said—I—I would have told you.”

“It’s fine.  There was never any cause.  I don’t need to know everything about you, John.”

The corner of John’s mouth twitches a little.  “I sometimes wonder if you don’t know everything already.”

Sherlock drops his eyes, tucks his head under John’s arm again, and presses his face to his side.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  He mutters against warm skin.

John chuckles again.  “Uh-huh…”

Sherlock smiles.

They fall into a comfortable silence.

Sherlock can feel the blood thrumming through John’s veins, hear the air rushing in and out of his lungs.  It’s comforting.  Just being—here, with him.  

There were nights he had laid awake in the dark, beneath a blanket of stars in Tibet, or under a bridge in Kazakhstan, or in a hotel room in Berlin, and he had thought of this, of only this, of John—alive, safe, breathing.  John, whom he had left, even though it nearly killed him to do it, for one reason only--to keep him safe, to keep him like this.

And John may never fully forgive him.  He knows that.  And maybe he was wrong, maybe he should have trusted John enough to tell him, to take him with him those two years, but he was admittedly selfish.  He would rather have had John here, in London, safe under the ever present eyes of MI-6 and Mycroft, than out there in the unknown where nothing was certain, nothing was controlled.  

Ironic and sad, then, that in the end London was perhaps more dangerous than any of the places Moriarty’s network was hidden away.  Ironic that the lynchpin of the whole plot was simply one more piece on the chessboard of Moriarty’s great game.  Mycroft, who, despite all Moriarty’s manipulations, stratagems, and well-laid plans, really was the queen to Sherlock’s king in the end.   Mycroft who had died to protect him.  

Moriarty had always thought that his hold over Mycroft was total, but oh how wrong he had been.  There is no pressure, no leverage in the world that can overpower love.  Love—the one thing that Moriarty had never quite understood, the one thing that Mycroft had always claimed to eschew, but was helpless against in the end.  A brother’s love is what had ended it all, ended Moriarty’s reign of terror, ended Mycroft’s life.  And love is what all of it has won Sherlock now.  This.  Here.  With John.  Just this togetherness.  It’s enough. 

“You okay?”  John reaches over, cards fingers through his hair.  

He nods against his ribs.

“Sure?”

He nods again, tightens his arm around John.  “Your mother…”

He feels some of the tension return to John’s body, but he forges on anyway.  “She died while I was away?”

John swallows tightly. “Yes.”

“Did you go to her funeral?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, John.  I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

“It’s fine.”  But John’s voice is tight, rough.  It doesn’t sound fine at all.

“I’m still sorry.”

John’s fingers move against his scalp.  “She was sick, really sick.  It was a mercy when it came, really.  She was—she was too full of life to be weighed down like that.”  John sounds small.

Sherlock looks up, and John looks down at him.  He looks small too, small and a little lost.  “You’re all I’ve got, you know—just you.  Tell me you won’t leave.  Promise me.”

“I promise,” Sherlock says without hesitation and with all solemnity. 

John nods.  “Good.”

“And you?”  Because Sherlock knows, but he wants to hear it again.

“I’m not going anywhere,” John confirms.  “Ever.”  He smiles then, weaves his fingers in and out of Sherlock’s curls.  “You’re stuck with me, I’m afraid.”

And Sherlock smiles back.  “You’re all I want.”  

And it’s true, he suddenly realizes.  Even _The Work_ , even that pales next to John.  After everything, if you took it all away, if you left him only one thing and he had to choose, it has always been and always will be John who keeps him right. 

John shifts, slides down until they’re face to face.  He kisses him, slow and deep, and when he pulls back his eyes are just a little wicked.  “Now—your turn.”  And with a wink he claims his mouth again.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
